Old projects

Idea

Develop a Flex application to allow a number of remote users to drag and drop web page categories into groups – the application then generates the optimal grouping for tree navigation of the site.

This could be extended to distributed brainstorming if users were allowed to dynamically create categories.

Could also be extended using a little image processing to process photos of collections of posit notes – each posit note containing an idea from a brain storming session. Users could then organise them into groups individually – the aggregate result being presented (as a dendrogram or other cluster representation).

Project

Use Flex list components (advanced data grids) to allow users to drag and drop categories together. Then apply something called dendrogram analysis to combine and show optimal grouping. This would be similar in many ways to WebSort

Idea

The images are laid out in a collage and displayed to the user using some simple rules e.g. images with 50% light sky should be at the top, images containing bright primaries should be at the front, images with similar Flickr tags.

If the user presses the button quickly then the collage receives a low score, those that the user lingers on receive a high score.

A genetic algorithm is used to generate new collages which are combinations of old (popular) collages.

At any point the user may ‘drag’ images into new positions or ‘zoom’ them to new sizes. These actions cause automatic repositioning of surrounding images using simple dynamics to give the photographs ‘weight’.

Goal:

Web application that allows students to upload images, movies, and comments to a Flex application that displays all information on a local Google Map. Users should be able to ‘sketch’ paths, routes, buildings as well as adding comments, movies etc. to locations.

Application should be locally hosted using simple PHP and MySQL.

Idea:

Use Google’s Flex API to create a web application that has full Google map functionality (see Google’s FlexDeveloper’s Guide) that on startup goes to the local Google Map.

Skills required

Flex application so programming skills required.

Inspiration:

Google myMaps provides a nice idea of the basics of the interface (I’ve added the routes and polygons highlighting our building and its carparks below). But imagine that this was a Flash app. to which we could add various animations, comment lists, wkiki, and mouseovers etc. and that it was linked to our own mySQL database. Local students could add movies, routes, places of interest, comments etc. (ok, so local pubs, shops, clubs would be more interesting…..)View Click here for larger map

Google’s Flex demos and Developer’s Guides show you how to get a simple Flex app. talking to Google maps (it took me about an hour to get something going).

Idea:

Web application that implements some of Photoshop, Gimp etc. – the most interesting ones being those that are highly interactive (and hence client-side processing) e.g. cutting out and compositing foreground figures and fitting 3D virtual rooms etc.

Skills required

Flex application so basic programming skills required.

Inspiration:

Idea:

Anything that you want to do for a Web application that’s legal and is challenging enough to provide good marks for a 4th year project. But it must have a clearly defined set of potential users and be of clear benefit to them, so it can’t be just an “I want to learn about Flex apps” project.

Skills required

Flex application so basic programming skills required.

Student must self-reliant and be likely to get a 2.1, of first class degree.